Tag: North America

GrayHair Software Receives U.S. Postal Service NCOALink Limited Service Provider Certification

Posted by | Jun 11, 2008 | |

GrayHair Software, Inc. has received U.S. Postal Service® certification as an NCOALink® Limited Service Provider. This certification allows GrayHair to offer NCOALink technology as part of GrayHair’s mail tracking and address quality services.

NCOALink processing uses data derived from the U.S. Postal Service® Change-of-Address (COA) database, using a secure process that enhances security of COA information. NCOALink technology allows mailers to update their lists with address changes before they are entered into the mail stream.

As a proactive move update process, mailers are satisfying USPS Move Update requirements with multiple methods. Today, mailers for First-Class Mail® are required to meet the Move Update requirements and in November for Standard Mail®. The best practice is to provide the NCOALink service and include Address Change Service (ACS™) too. The savvy mailer today performs aggressive Move Update processing to speed delivery and minimize costly Undeliverable-as-addressed mail pieces for any mail class.

GrayHair’s Move Update services are available to licensees of GrayHair’s MailTrak and Address Quality suite of software.

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DHL faces anti-trust probe as Ohio representatives question UPS deal

Posted by | Jun 10, 2008 | |

Representatives of the U.S. state of Ohio are pushing for the Federal Justice Ministry to launch an anti-trust probe into Deutsche Post World Net AG.’s plans to tie up its U.S. air express DHL operations with UPS, Die Welt reported.

The representatives are trying to prevent DHL from cutting up to 8,200 jobs in the course of entering into a ten-year co-operation with competitor UPS.

In March, Deutsche Post said its fourth-quarter profit slid by more than 60 percent after it wrote down the value of its DHL unit. DHL is slashing network capacity in the U.S. by 30 percent, which includes closing and consolidating sorting facilities and streamlining pickup and delivery routes.

A spokeswoman for Deutsche Post told Die Welt that the company does not expect U.S. authorities to object to its planned co-operation with UPS.

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DHL Express (USA) ceases @home service

Posted by | Jun 10, 2008 | |

DHL Express just confirmed with PARCEL that it will discontinue the DHL@home product effective September 1, 2008. The service tendered packages to the USPS for final delivery, reducing costs for the shipper.

According to DHL: “By doing so, DHL removes a product that brings with it significant operating costs and is not aligned with our core strengths nor with our more focused network. By eliminating the product from our network, we have the opportunity to further improve performance in our core domestic and international products and long-term financial performance of the US Express business.

“DHL is committed to serving our domestic customers with a network dedicated to continuous improvement in service reliability. We anticipate that discontinuing the @home service with its seasonal spikes of volume and operational complexity will further improve reliability throughout the year and enhance service levels particularly during peak season.”

DHL Express is directly notifying all @home customers of the change.

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USPS show benefits of digital signage

Posted by | Jun 9, 2008 | |

The US Postal Services has released results that show the effectiveness of digital signage in redirecting customers to in-store self-service options. With over 32,000 busy retail locations, encouraging customers to change their behaviour and help themselves to information and services is a central part of the USPS’s strategy.

In a recent test the Post Office installed 30-inch “Stop and Turn” screens in the main entrances, showing short, direct and simple 3-5 second messages such as “Get out line. Buy stamps at vending” or “Jump the line, Ship pacages at the APC”.

The USPS has 2,500 APC’s (Automated Postal Center), interactive kiosks that sell stamps and provide a mail service point for packages. The “Stop and Turn” digital signage screen had the effect of making customers more likely to use both the stamp vending (8.7% against 6.5%) and the APC service (7.4% against 3.4%).

The digital screens were also used to promote the availability of postal services in the 70,000 other non-post office locations (such as supermarkets). Again the digital signage tests showed a 22% jump in awareness – and to prove the point, revenues from stamp sales declined in the test sites, only to rise in the local alternative locations.

AKA COMMENT

It is easy to see why the Post Office is innovating in self-service. A reduction in human interaction of 2.2% and 4% across 32,000 locations would result in a vast saving of staff time. This not only opens up the opportunity to cut costs in-store, but as the banks have found, it frees-up valuable employee time for selling higher margin and more complex products.

Customers are proving themselves ever more comfortable with the concept of self-service, what started with the ATM has spread through the internet to cover a whole range of different product categories. The difficulty has always been persuading customers to use the silent ‘box in the corner’.

From this research it would seem that combining the kiosk with dynamic digital signage may hold the key.

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Digital signage used by USPS to spark interest in kiosks

Posted by | Jun 9, 2008 | |

Sometimes, when I speak at conferences, I joke about some of the long-standing traditions we have at the Postal Service: “More than 230 years of tradition unmarred by progress.”

Beyond that self-deprecating attempt at humor, I’m proud to say that there has been significant progress over the years – from simple innovations like self-adhesive stamps and flat-rate priority mail boxes to more complex ones like automated mail sorting and printing postage online.

The Postal Service also has made progress with the testing and deployment of large, complex communication networks. In 1996, we introduced Postal Vision, an employee communications network that now is integrated with our USPS-TV network. As an “early adopter” of digital signage, we began testing the impact of digital vs. static menu boards in retail lobbies in 1999. And in 2003, we laid the groundwork for a test of digital signage that began in selected post offices in 2004 – The Post Office Channel. This third effort took advantage of the advances that had taken place in a growing medium including content delivery methods and the declining costs of technology.

One of our challenges is to improve the customer experience in more than 32,000 retail locations. Digital signage can have a positive impact on the retail environment in several ways. One opportunity is to increase the range of information available to customers while they are waiting to be served. The Post Office Channel features product and service messages to educate and inform retail customers. For example, one message compares the product features of overnight express mail and two-to-three-day priority mail. Another compares delivery confirmation to signature confirmation and shows which form to use depending on which service the customer chooses.

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